Quote Originally Posted by Jeekay56 View Post
In 1960 on the way home from doing his military service in Germany, he changed Aeroplanes at Prestwick.
I do wonder if the appetite for Mersey Beat would have ever spread nationwide had Elvis toured Britain between 60 and 62. There was a degree of hysteria for Cliff and some of those Larry Parnes acts but nothing on the scale we would have seen for Elvis and then got for The Beatles and The Stones. Elvis however, by that time, was very much deferential to his elders, he wouldn't have changed attitudes, it would have been disastrous for the rock scene and could have set it back as much as a decade.
It's staggering really that in the year you've got the Tsar bomb being dropped and, another year on, the Cuban missile crisis, the most edgy act on the TV and radio is a bunch of geeks doing choreographed leg kicks to guitar instrumentals. Even the folk scene hadn't got started properly. Who were the people on the CND marches listening to? That Dave Brubeck single on repeat? It's astonishing to me that those in power had such an incredibly firm grip on the youth at that time, though obviously it wasn't to last much longer. The pace of change between 64 and 69 will never be repeated.